Why does nobody talk about L2 charger overheating in summer?

Last July in Phoenix I was plugging in my car after work and noticed the handle on my charger felt way too hot. Like you couldn't hold it for more than a few seconds. A guy from the local EV meetup saw me and said I was killing my charging speed by leaving it coiling up on the hot concrete. He showed me that if the cable gets too warm, the car throttles back the amps to protect itself. I tested it the next day - when I laid the cable out on a cooler surface in the shade, my charge rate jumped from 28 to 32 amps. That's like 15% faster charging for free. Has anyone else seen their speeds drop in extreme temps?

3 comments

3 Comments

richard1371mo ago

72 degrees is the sweet spot for my charger in Portland where I actually see speeds drop when it's too cold, not too hot. Last January I was getting 24 amps because the battery management system was warming the pack instead of charging. That's a bigger deal to me than some theoretical summer overheating issue because most of us aren't parking on lava in Phoenix. The thermal throttling on the cable is a safety feature that rarely kicks in for normal people, and if you're getting 32 amps instead of 28 I'd argue that's you just not having a proper 50 amp circuit in the first place. A proper hardwired unit with a thicker gauge wire wouldn't have that problem, and coiled cables on concrete is operator error not a design flaw.

the_kim2d ago

Coil up the cable on hot pavement here in SoCal and my charge speed drops by about 10%. Simple fix is to just lay it out flat on the ground in the shade. Do it every time now.

fisher.mason1mo ago

Yo that's wild! I didn't realize cables had a temp limit like that. It honestly makes me wonder how many other little things we're missing that slow down or break our stuff without us knowing. Have you noticed any other hidden quirks like that?